Kineme
Kineme
the smallest unit of speech articulation—that is, the feature of a sound (phoneme) that is determined by the position or movement of the speech organs (according to the definition of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay). For example, Russian p, b, and m have in common the kineme of labiality. The kineme is opposed to the acousma, an acoustic feature of sound (phoneme). The concepts of kineme and acousma are similar to the modern notion of the distinctive feature of a phoneme. The smallest unit of mime (gestural) speech is also sometimes called the kineme.